CISPA: Back From The Dead

Mike Rogers (R-MI) should learn from his prior foray into the American People’s privacy and President Obama’s vehement opposition to his once-defunct, Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). According to Bloomberg, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee is seeking to raise this piece of legislation from the dead. Sources expect President Obama to act on the issue of cyber security after his State of the Union Address tonight.

The threat is, according to Rogers, increasingly real and it is the job of the government to arm American companies with “…the information they need to better protect their networks from these dangerous cyber threats.”

Economics inspire the drive for increased security. Rogers points out, “They’re taking blueprints back, not just military documents, but civil innovation that companies are gonna use to create production lines to build things. They’re stealing that, repurposing it back in nations like China and competing in the international market.”

Some estimates place the value of information hacked, disseminated, and repurposed in the billions of dollars.

These sources are correct, the information is valuable. In this data-drive age, all information is valuable and CISPA is an effort by the government to collect and redistribute information in a way that is valuable to its interests and assets on the heels of a threat from outside forces.

Americans need to be on guard to this encroachment as, history shows that powers, such as the ability to collect information, once vested with the government, are not given up from the government easily.

When CISPA originally crept up and was threatening to be passed into law, President Obama promised to veto the bill if it ever got to him. Fortunately, the original incarnation of this legislation died in the Senate.

Choices between safety and freedom are fought along small steps that amount to great change and one recalls the President’s words in his first inaugural address, “…we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals.